Riding the storm - By Julie Miller Page 0,52

that she was just plain glad to see him.

Maybe a little too glad, she cautioned herself.

That tight white shirt showed every flex of muscle as he worked. She couldn’t resist watching him move, his limp minimized by the power and precision that defined the rest of his body. Even bruised and battered, she’d found that body an irresistible treasure to explore. But for now, maybe forever, she’d have to content herself with just looking.

Tucking away any yearnings or regrets that lingered from almost making love for the first time on her couch, Jolene concentrated on safer feelings, like the security she’d felt when he’d held her in his arms during the worst of the storm.

“If this is good, I sure don’t want to see bad,” she answered at last. “You should have gotten me up. I would have helped.”

“It’s the middle of the night. You needed your rest. I needed some fresh, dry air.” And some distance from her?

Jolene crossed the yard, picking up pieces of trash along the way. “What is it now, about one o’clock in the morning?”

“A little after.”

Maybe hunger accounted for the uneasy feeling that lingered in her stomach. She could hope it was that simple and not a symptom of confused feelings or thwarted lust. “Have you had a chance to assess the damage?”

Broody, her lab retriever, and Shasta, a pint-size terrier mix, darted in and out of the shadows around Nate’s feet, guarding the place, supervising his work, checking out anything interesting that crossed their path. Seemed they’d adopted their California guest much more quickly and easily than she had.

Nate scratched Shasta behind the ears, then tossed a stick for Broody to fetch. The big dog gladly bounded off into the darkness. Seemed as if Nate had no problem dealing with them, either.

Just their owner.

“Not too much beyond the obvious,” Nate told her. “The animals are all accounted for, though.” He shooed Shasta away from the bull’s pen. “Even Mr. Stud here seems to be doing all right for himself.”

Bits of debris clung to Rocky’s hide, but there were no visible signs of injury beyond the cuts he’d sustained from the barbed wire. The bull chewed on the leafy end of a branch that had blown into his pen. He had the gall to stare accusingly at Nate, as if the storm had interfered with his wanderlust and somehow the humans were to blame for the inconvenience.

“Lily shouldn’t have worried,” Jolene said. “I’m not sure anything can kill that bull.” If only the rest of her property could be so tough. She slowly turned with her light, taking stock of the destruction.

The tractor shed was little more than a pile of twisted metal siding wrapped around the tractor and old beater truck that had been parked inside. Shingles from the barn roof were scattered across the ground. And there was debris everywhere. Leaves, branches, tumbleweeds, items she couldn’t identify. What looked like a little girl’s dollhouse sat in the pile of trash Nate was stacking beside the barn.

Jolene walked over and inspected the toy’s mud-stained interior. “I wonder where this blew in from. Someone’s going to be missing it.”

“I hope the girl it belongs to is in better shape. That her mother got her down into a basement or took her to a public shelter.” Nate tossed an armload of loose planks onto the pile and went back for another load.

“I’m sure she’s fine.”

“Yeah.” He didn’t sound convinced.

What was it that caused him such pain? She suspected it went far beyond ripped-up skin or a shattered knee. But if he didn’t want to confide in her, she wasn’t going to ask. As much as she’d loved that teasing, talkative, passionate side of Nate, she sensed that he needed to reassert his self-control in order to cope.

Though whether he was coping with the past or the present, survival or regret or her, she had no idea.

“Can’t this wait ’til morning?” She picked up some downed branches and added them to the pile. Keeping busy seemed to distract them both from uncomfortable thoughts. “I’m assuming that’s your work in the kitchen, too?”

“I wanted to make sure Rocky was secure and the generators were working. Since we don’t know how long we’ll have to conserve electricity, I thought we’d better do something with the food before it went bad.”

But spoiled food wasn’t her primary concern. She thought of her father and the hundreds of evacuees he was responsible for. If Turning Point had been hit like the